One Way to Excite Ourselves about Work (or School)
One way to plant motivation in our children (and ourselves) is to encourage them to dream big.
What’s the link between big dreams and motivation?
It doesn’t matter how ‘crazy’ their goals seem.
Any goal which excites our children to study, get good grades and take part in school activities is a good one.
Successful, all-rounded teenagers dare to dream big.
Underachievers usually don’t have clear goals.
Neil Armstrong dreamt of flying to the moon since young. His mother encouraged him although it was an impossibility back then. We all know the ending to this story – he became the first man to walk on the moon
It doesn’t matter if our children’s ambitions seem far-fetched right now. Ambitions will change as the years pass.
As long as the goal excites them about school, it’s a good one.
We can apply this tactic to ourselves so as to motivate ourselves to be more excited about our work and business.
Have a good Monday ahead 🙂
The ABC Formula Which Makes Your Teen Feel Empowered When Facing Problems! (Positive Thinking)
Let’s discuss how we can switch negative thoughts to positive thoughts using the ABC formula.
Why would we want our teenagers to learn this? It’s because optimistic teenagers can bounce back from failures or mistakes fast. When they recover fast from mistakes, they can plan and strategise their next action, instead of drowning in embarrassment, anger or sadness – which is not very productive.
Optimistic Teens Do Not Break Down When Facing Problems
Optimistic teenagers can handle problems calmly because they don’t think that every failure or mistake is a disaster. So if a positive teenager fails a Maths test for the second time in a row, he or she will change studying methods, choose to be more active in class, form a study group and so on.
On the other hand, a negative teenager will start beating himself up by thinking, ‘I’m a failure. I’m a loser. I can do nothing right. I’m useless…’ and so on.
This negative attitude will most probably drag and in the end, the negative teenager is likely to do nothing to change habits, strategies or studying methods. That’s because he or she believes he or she is born a failure and nothing he or she does will help.
What happens after that? With this mindset and attitude, the teen is likely to keep failing test after test, exam after exam.
How to Use the ABC Formula to Switch to a More Empowering Mindset
In short, a positive student believes that his or her methods and habits need to improve, whereas a negative student believes that he or she is the problem – and is helpless about it. In some cases, a negative teen believes that the teachers, parents, tutor, friends (and basically everyone else except himself or herself) cause the failure. In other words, a victim mentality.
So in the ABC formula, the ‘B’ – which stands for ‘Belief’ – needs to change.
A stands for Activating event (in the above example: failing a Maths test twice in a row)
B stands for Belief (in the above scenario: A negative teen believing that he is a ‘loser’ and is ‘helpless’ about it)
C stands for Consequence: (in the negative teen scenario: He or she will keep failing Math as the teen chooses not to change any studying habits)
For an optimistic student, the ABC acronym looks like this:
A stands for Activating event (in the above example: failing a Maths test twice in a row)
B stands for Belief (in the above example: A positive teen believing that he or she needs to change studying habits, be more proactive in class and spend more time revising Math)
C stands for Consequence: (the positive teen will feel more in control of his or her life and more empowered to face problems head-on. Changing strategies = a change in results = possibly a pass in the next Maths test)
In conclusion…
That’s how we can change our thoughts from negative to more positive using the ABC formula. We have to change our beliefs about a particular event or incident.
Our methods, habits or strategies might be causing the ‘problem’. So we change these and keep tweaking until we get the results we want.
I hope this sharing helps you somehow. Please share this post with your friends if you find it helpful!
Have a good week!
Making Mistakes Is Good! Here’s why.
https://youtu.be/tdNW9T1DIlA
Our children (and us, included) will make many mistakes in life.
Here’s how we can reframe thoughts and motivate them/ourselves once something ‘wrong’ is done!
The 4-Step Shortcut to Good Communication Skills (The R.E.A.P. Formula)
https://youtu.be/4DQySecbFXg
All of us know that having effective communication skills is important, although some of us may not be sure how and why.
We are used to hearing that getting a high salary and scoring high marks in exams are indicators of ‘success’ – but we might not be aware that our communication skills have a huge part to play in our ‘success’.
Effective Communication Skills Might Land You a Better Job or Get Better Grades
According to research, ‘Excellent Communication Skills’ is one of the topcriteria that employers look for in a potential employee. This means that Communication Skills should be taught from a young age.
Sadly, many educators strongly prioritise the academics and exams – and sometimes, life skills such as communication skills are taught as an…afterthought.
When I was a counsellor, I noticed that students with stellar communication skills tend to be more cheerful, more resilient, surrounded by reliable friends and are well-liked by teachers.
From a practical point of view… it helps a whole lot when we have people willing to help us, willing to cooperate with us and if we are well-liked and respected. Having a satisfying school life, work life and social life become (almost) effortless.
Strong communication skills, coupled with good grades or work ethic, is a recipe for excellence.
Most of us would want this for ourselves and our children.
So how do we start attaining ‘effective communication skills’?
The R.E.A.P. Formula for Effective Communication Skills
- Respectful
Being respectful to others is a no-brainer. This means viewing everyone – regardless of status – as someone who has something valuable to teach us.
(Even the seemingly nastiest person we know teaches us something – for eg: patience, tolerance and resilience.)
People might have different opinions from us – but this is not an invitation for us to argue with them to prove that we are ‘right’. It takes immense strength to not react when someone has a different opinion from us regarding a topic.
It helps to accept that people may not view the world through the same lenses as we do. We don’t have to agree with everyone, but we respect that everyone has a right to their own viewpoint.
2. Empathy
This means to be sensitive to other people’s feelings. If a colleague just got demoted (and is upset about it) whereas we received a pay raise, this is not the best time to go to that colleague to ‘share’ our good news.
Some might argue and say that we should express our happiness no matter what – and the other upset colleague should automatically be ‘happy’ for our good news.
Let’s do a role-reversal: Would we feel better or worse if a colleague flaunts her pay raise to us when we just got sacked? It probably feels terrible as much as we want to be happy for our colleague.
Human beings are complex in nature. In theory, we know that we should feel happy for that colleague… but in reality, we’ll most likely feel down in the dumps.
Emotions tend to drive most of our decisions as human beings.
Being empathetic means being able to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. And being able to decide which questions are appropriate to ask and which aren’t. How to give negative feedback. And when to stop talking about a certain topic and move on to the next.
3. Active Listening
What is active listening? In simple terms, it includes paraphrasing and asking questions.
Paraphrasing is a common technique used by counsellors. Basically, you summarise your partner’s story in your own words. This means that a) we need to listen closely and b) the other party will feel understood when talking to you.
Asking questions is another way of showing your interest in the other person’s story.
You can ask close-ended questions, open-ended or specific questions. The best questions to ask are definitely open-ended and specific questions.
Example of a close-ended question (or a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ question) : ‘Did you go to work today?’
Open-ended question: ‘What do you like about the food at that new Italian restaurant?’
Specific Question: ‘You mentioned that you started a consulting business. What is your niche area?’
I think the examples above are pretty self-explanatory.
4. Positive statements
It’s easy to criticise and pass negative judgement about something or someone. That’s because our brains have a ‘negative bias’ – a tendency to focus on the negative aspects of life to ‘protect’ us from harm.
Having effective communication skills means that we utter more positive statements than negative ones. In fact, according to research, the ideal praise-to-criticism ratio is 5 to 6 positive remarks to 1 negative remark.
If you are a leader of sorts, you might want to consider giving your colleagues 5-6 affirmations before giving that 1 constructive criticism.
This makes it more likely for your colleagues to listen to you and be open to your suggestions. This high praise-to-criticism ratio is a characteristic of high-performing teams.
(The low-performing teams have a praise-to-criticism ratio of 0.36 positive comments to 1 negative comment).
People are also more motivated to perform well when they are affirmed or acknowledged to have done something right.
The R.E.A.P. Formula is a basic but practical start to attain some good communication skills.
As mentioned above….
Effective communication skills + Good Grades or Work Ethic = Big achievements
Have a good week!
We all hate to be criticised. At some point, we will face criticism – be it at work, in school or even by close family members.
If you are a critical person, chances are you are very hard on yourself and criticise yourself a lot. Being overly-critical does not make us an intelligent person – ironically, it makes us seem uptight and petty. Sooner or later, people will stop hanging out with us because critical people are just not fun to be with.
On the flipside, when we get criticism, we all react differently – some of us will counter attack, some of us will be defensive, whereas the open-minded ones will reflect.
How should we handle criticism in school or at work such that it serves us?
1. Be calm and open
Do not shoot your critic immediately. Be open minded and see whether there is any truth in that criticism.
This is a humbling act. But it expands our minds and if the criticism is true, we can use this opportunity to improve ourselves. It also makes us more aware of our flaws, if the criticism is indeed true.
If you feel angry and upset by the criticism, take about 30 minutes to calm down first before replying or you might say something you regret.
2. Decide if the criticism is fair or unfair
If your critic has your best interest at heart, you can listen to him. If your critic is giving you useless feedback based on his envy, insecurity or lack of knowledge, you can take his criticism with a pinch of salt. It’s just another form of bullying.
3. Get help if needed
Harsh criticism, name-calling, insults, put-downs are a form of bullying and emotional abuse.
Be aware that someone who is constantly bullying other people is someone who was likely to be bullied in the past. A person like this is insecure and gets the feeling of power and superiority by attacking someone whom he sees as quieter, milder or ‘weaker’.
It’s not easy to run away from him if you see him everyday at school or work. Thus, get the help from relevant people if you need to.
In conclusion…
It’s safe to say that some people are critical by nature and nobody and nothing will ever make them happy.
They will always find some nitty-gritty detail to pick on. These people are probably very critical of themselves as well and constantly bullying their own selves inside.
Hopefully we can all accept that making mistakes is part of learning, it’s part of life and be easy on ourselves and be easy on other people as well.
Have a good week.